Monday, July 26, 2004

How to make your translator cry:

1.  Don't use verbs. 
2.  Create a situation that involves two men, a masculine corporate entity, and several masculine documents.  Then cease using nouns for the rest of the text, using only the third person singular masculine pronoun.
3.  Tell the story as it occurs to you instead of in chronological order. Bonus points for using the present tense to refer to things that happened in the early past, then using the past tense to refer to things that happened in the recent past.
4.  Always use definite articles when referring to something you haven't mentioned yet.
5.  Quote jurisprudence (excuse me, "case law") frequently, but never cite the decisions you are quoting.  For bonus points, quote jurisprudence that has not yet been archived, uploaded or indexed by Google.
6.  Instead of using one noun to refer to one concept, use a staggering array of synonyms of your own creation every time a substantive is called for.  Make sure these synonyms sound very similar to language that might be found in a law, but are, in fact, just a chain of random words.
7.  Don't bother to explicitly which individuals are the appellant, defendant, plaintiff, counsel, etc. 
8.  Make up your own names for forms, codes, titles, organization names, and other standardized terminology.

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